Talk:Natron

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[edit] Rephrase

This sentence coudl use a rephrasing as Natron does not exactly 'eat' does it?

It ate the flesh-eating bacteria that would decompose the body.

Natron kills microbes through both its severe drying action and high pH. Gwen Gale 01:13, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bicarbonate?

The "Use in Antiquity" section mentions "At the same time the bicarbonate...". What bicarbonate? The foreward for Natron only describes sodium carbonate decahydrate; no bicarbonate at all. However, the Wikipedia entry for Sodium Carbonate refers to natron as "a combination of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate" (which is more in line with what I thought natron is). Which is correct? Is natron exclusively Na₂(CO₃)•10(H₂O)? Or is it a blend of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate? (If so, is this combination what I sometimes see referred to as sodium sesquicarbonate?) 68.188.197.199 15:44, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

It's mostly a mixture of these two minerals, I've put this in the text. Gwen Gale 08:49, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I've seen some "mineral buff" websites which describe natron as simple hydrated sodium carbonate, they're mistaken. Gwen Gale 03:41, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Not mistaken, just using a different nomenclature/jargon. When geologists or mineralogists refer to compounds, they use different terms or terms differently than chemists or historians. The term natron derived of course historically, referring to a deposit of sodium carbonate mineral in egypt. As a natural deposit, it was mixture of the decahydrate and bicarbonate (see e.g. geology section). In modern times, mineralogists started naming the individual minerals in a deposit - and natron was chosen as the mineral name of the chemical compound sodium carbonate decahydrate. And this term is used in this way in the respective text books, journals and other scientific publications. This might annoy the linguistic purist, but this is how language is used. Sodium bicarbonate as a mineral is called nahcolite (derived from the chemical formula NaHCO3) - the historical natron is composed of the minerals natron, nahcolite as well as traces of halite, thenardite, calcite, etc.Mirkano (talk) 09:49, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's true, I'd since learned there are parallel nomenclatures. Thanks for writing this clarification. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:09, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Impurities

I've moved the following text here:

Typical impurities include 1.2% silica, 1.5% lime, 0.6% potash, 0.6% magnesia, 0.6% alumina and 0.7% iron oxide.

These seem so precise as to be limited to a single geographical location or region. Either way, is there a supporting citation? Gwen Gale (talk) 19:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)